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  • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 7 months ago
    While I certainly agree that science is not a democracy and consensus does not determine reality I am reluctant to call science "a search for truth". "Truth" conveys a sense of absolutism that is not available to scientists. For example, is Newtonian mechanics true? It certainly works in a broad range of circumstances but as Faraday and Maxwell showed there are conditions where it fails. This is excusable because electrodynamics was unknown in Newtons time so he had no reason to include it in his theory. Newtonian dynamics shows that there is a tight relationship between gravitation and momentum. his theory is calculable, observable and testable. And, most important of all, it works, at least most of the time. Einstein provided a reconciliation of Newton and Maxwell in his Special theory of Relativity. In my mind science provides a set of tools that allow us to pursue understanding of the behavior of the world around us. We need to recognize that that understanding will probably never be complete. It will always be subject to modification as new information becomes available. I think that the difference between truth and understanding is more than a semantic one. The search for understanding is an unending quest but the search for "truth" implies that omniscience is achievable. That seems unlikely.
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
      Scientific knowledge certainly is truth. The systematic, objective pursuit leading to scientific truths is the highest example of seeking and finding truth. It does not mean "omniscience" and truth does not mean the "absolutism" of mystical insight.

      Faraday and Maxwell did not refute Newton; they knew they were investigating new phenomena that Newton's mechanics made no claim to explain. The progress of science is an accumulation of knowledge as the scope and depth of the context of knowledge expands, not a succession of exploded fallacies.

      You are confusing science with the philosophy of Pragmatism with its "tools" and truth as whatever "works".
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      • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 7 months ago
        If you allow the notion that "Truth" can evolve with improved understanding then I agree. However, the general understanding of "truth" is that it is inviolable, eternal, and unchanging. In this sense "truth" is a theological rather than a scientific concept. If that is the way the word is used then it has no place in science.
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
          Truth is a logical and philosophical concept, not theology. It means correspondence between a statement and the facts. The notion that truth "evolves" is Pragmatism, with it's "truth is what works" and "what is true today may not be tomorrow".

          The context of our knowledge expands and we learn more. Learning more with new discoveries does not invalidate the facts and principles we already knew unless a genuine mistake is uncovered. Electrodynamics did not invalidate Newton's mechanics. Newton's laws are just as true today as they were when he formulated them about the same facts of nature.

          Science is objective, neither a mystical insight with assumed infinite precision nor a succession of exploded fallacies. Theology and Pragmatist philosophy are a false alternative.
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          • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 7 months ago
            Can you cite an example of a scientific truth?
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            • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
              We just did: Newton's laws and Maxwell's equations.
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              • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 7 months ago
                Newton's laws and Maxwell's equations are known to be incomplete. In addition, they are behavioral in nature rather than existential so while they describe what things do they do not describe what things are. they are behavioral models that have known limitations and boundaries beyond which they loose their power to predict outcomes.. As such they are, at best, half truths. The same can be said of special and general relativity and quantum mechanics. The problem is that stating that a scientific theory reflects "truth" tends to cut off argument. That is exactly what the AGW proponents recognize and why their arguments are successful. No one wants to challenge the "Truth". Scientific advancement consists of improving our models. this means that we must recognize that there is room for improvement. Truth is absolute and needs no improvement.
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                • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
                  Newton's laws and Maxwell's equations are not "half truths". They are a system of principles relating known gravitational or electromagnetic phenomenon, objects, forces and motions under known circumstances within the relevant context of the subject matter. All knowledge is "limited" to what it is about. Lack of an impossible omniscience does not imply that what we do know is "half truths". We know what we know, about the facts we know about, not an infinity of everything at once or nothing. Clear, contextual knowledge limited to what it is does not mean "half truths". Without truth there couldn't even be a concept of "half truth".

                  Explanation is relational, integrating a body of knowledge with what is already objectively understood and known to be true, not an impossible infinite regress of causes of causes of causes of ... to a mystical ultimate. Rational understanding is objective, contextual, and finite, not either wrapping your consciousness around reality in an infinite mystic insight or the false alternative of skepticism.

                  Truth is a correspondence between statements and facts; it does not preclude improvement through expanded knowledge. Knowledge of what is true is a contextual absolute -- it is absolutely true in the context of what you know about to the degree of precision validated, which is part of the known context. Knowing what is true does not cut off questions about why, the search for the limits of the context, correction of errors, or argument about new discoveries; it makes them all possible. Without truth there is no basis for rational argument at all. Without truth you know nothing and can make no progress. Science is not a progression of exploded fallacies muddling in "half truths". Leave the Pragmatists to their own subjectivism and skepticism as they blindly wander through whatever they claim "works" at the moment as their sorry excuse for knowledge.

                  Those who fear "the Truth", as if it were dogma by nature, with no understanding of what truth and contextual knowledge are, or the basis for particular instances of knowledge, can have no rational understanding and therefore fear certainty of anything. Knowledge is understanding of facts through our conceptual faculty, it is awareness of reality, not a Kantian "model" in parallel with it -- which is the contemporary common form of skepticism and subjectivism as the false alternative to mysticism. Those who think in "models", fearing certainty of objective knowledge as awareness of reality, become rationalistic dogmatists or hopeless fragmented skeptics, or both, with no means of knowing as they trap themselves inside their own minds.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 7 months ago
    The video is two people yelling at each another in a disjointed and irrational way. When my 6- and 8-y/o act like this I've learned not to try to understand what the rant means but rather to get them to calm down first.

    I'm curious if they're acting like that for a reason, but all I can do is listen to what they say.
    Person A: [Ad hominem attacks and swearing about gender issues]
    Person B: You said 98% of scientists say global warming is a major problem. This means there must be a list of qualified scientists and a subset of those who agree. That's LOGIC! (impressed with herself) Do you have a list!?
    Person B: Science does not operate on consensus.
    Person B: People can discover new things in science, e.g. that the earth is round. (I think she's contradicting herself, saying there can be a consensus, but it can be overturned by new evidence.)
    Person B: The list of scientists who question that global warming is a problem is growing, but that doesn't matter because my mind's already made up regardless.
    Person A: Here is a list of climate scientists you asked for.
    Person B: Does it have every scientist who ever lived!? (She's just like my 6 y/o. LOL)
    Person A: It's an inter-governmental panel...
    Person B: That's governmental, not a scientific org?
    Person A: Some panel members are from the EU. (nothing to do with B's claim)
    Person B: So what?
    Person A: EU has a great record on sustainable energy. (This is totally begging the question, using a form of what she's trying to prove in her proof. I think it's trolling.)
    Person B: Spain has 20% unemployment! (LOL, nothing to do with this discussion)
    Person A: Spain has good healthcare and nutrition programs. (LOL, absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.)
    Person B: Ad hominem attacks
    Person A: The US dollar isn't doing well. (Huh,WTF? USD is the reserve currency of the world.)
    Person B: Only 1 person in a million (0.0001%) believes that, so it is not true. (Apparently she does believe in knowledge by consensus.)

    The most interesting thing to me is anyone could listen to this and think, "That was a very interesting discussion." They yell at and insult each other, jump topics at random, are simply incorrect in half their statements, and don't make any cogent points.

    I actually wonder if this is a satire of popular science in our time. Take an interesting topic. Yell and swear irrationally about a hodgepodge of unrelated issues. Slap the lurid title "Epic Takedown" on it as if it were anything more than people mindlessly yelling. Get 1.5M people to watch it.
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    • Posted by Animal 7 years, 7 months ago
      "Does it have every scientist who ever lived!?"

      It's important to note that there really isn't a discipline called "scientist." People who don't know much about science as a discipline throw the word around while having a vague mental image of someone like the Professor on Gilligan's Island, who could make a fusion reactor from three vines, a handful of sand and a coconut.

      In reality the term "scientist" could and does encompass a whole range of specialties.

      If you want information on climate, you talk to a climatologist.
      If you want to discuss evolution, you talk to a biologist.
      If you want to talk about nuclear fission or fusion, you talk to a physicist.
      If you want to talk about stellar formation and the age of the universe, you talk to a cosmologist.

      One of the biggest mistakes the media (and many, many people) is finding some knucklehead who has a vaguely science-y sounding degree and trotting him out as an expert on a whole range of issues. Like Bill Nye, for example, a mechanical engineer; there's no reason to think he knows his ass from his face about climatology, or biology, or physics.
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      • Posted by Maritimus 7 years, 7 months ago
        Hello ... I cringe at calling you buy your "name", since I like to pretend to be a gentleman,

        I think that you might be a little too rigid. I think that most people knowledgeable about him would agree that Michael Faraday was one the best scientists of all time. He had not gone to school to earn a "degree". Still, he was one of the most influential scientists of all time.

        I think that you have to agree that science, by definition, is the search about the facts of reality (or existence). It is the exponential growth of knowledge that imposed specialization. It is continuously necessary to know more and more to be able to advance a scientific field. Knowledge is required basis for advancement into new knowledge. And given the infinity of "things" and "phenomena" in that reality, "sky is the limit". Hence, bigger and bigger teams of scientists needed to make a new discovery. And discoveries get to be incrementally smaller and smaller.

        Also, I do not think it right to exclude, say, a chemist from an intelligent, knowledgeable and productive discussion of climate. I can think of innumerable combinations of scientific fields where productive insights can be gained from inputs from different scientific "branches". In fact, "interfaces" among those "branches" are often the most fertile grounds for advancement.

        Also, there are plenty of, is it ignorami? ;-), with fancy degrees from even fancier schools, just as there are many very knowledgeable people without any degrees. Isn't it very difficult to ascertain how much of what someone knows?

        One last comment. Techne is Greek for art. I will quote Leslie Groves (who knows who said it before him?): "Engineering is ART OF THINGS THAT WORK." I find that definition simply beautiful. Engineers need knowledge from a number of scientific fields to do their thing. To design a new model they go to the most recent prior model that worked (most of the time). Then they have to gamble. No way you can test for 40 years a model that is expected to function ("work") 40 years. Takes guts.

        Just my comments on the theme.

        Stay well.
        Sincerely,
        Maritimus
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        • Posted by Animal 7 years, 7 months ago
          "Hello ... I cringe at calling you buy your "name", since I like to pretend to be a gentleman,"

          Don't trouble yourself over it; it's a real-life nickname I've carried since the mid 1980s. My wife calls me Animal.

          Your comments are thought-provoking and well taken.
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
        Of course there is a discipline of science. It includes many branches of expertise in different kinds of knowledge. They all share the systematic exploration and integration of objective knowledge. That is why we have an objective concept of "scientist". It doesn't mean that any scientist is an expert in all the branches, let alone that smooth talking ideological evangelists like Nye understand any of it or what it takes to attain scientific knowledge.
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        • Posted by Animal 7 years, 7 months ago
          I worded that poorly. Science is a discipline, yes; more to the point it is a system for examining facts and observations to come up with explanations for how those facts came to be and how the systems behind them work. For example: It is an observed fact that allele frequencies in populations change over time. The theory of evolution is an explanation of the factors that cause allele frequencies in populations to change, including the various factors that influence the rate and manner of those changes; differential reproductive success, random mutation, and so on.

          But it is correct, if someone refers to person A as a "scientist," to object that this statement is inconclusive; the obvious reply is "what kind of scientist?"
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      • Posted by KevinSchwinkendorf 7 years, 7 months ago
        Thank you for a great post! I could have inserted a hearty "LOL!" after several points. Yeah, Bill Nye, "The SCIENCE GUY!" -- ooh I bet he even has a Master's degree - IN SCIENCE! LOL! I looked up Bill Nye on google and his only earned degree is a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell. After that, the article listed about half a dozen or so HONORARY doctorates. Which really means nothing, except that he gave a few speeches, and he popularized "science" on his kids shows. I'm sure he understands "science" at least at the level of setting up a free-body diagram for analyzing static forces, and probably took a good junior-level 3D dynamics class, but advanced numerical simulation of the complex processes in global climate simulation? I doubt it - he just regurgitates whatever Al Gore tells him. Actually, if you want to know about how fission or fusion produces electricity for the grid, you talk to a nuclear engineer. Or, in the case of fusion, if you want to talk about how it MIGHT produce electricity in the future, you talk to a nuclear engineer/plasma physicist. :-)
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    • Posted by $ blarman 7 years, 7 months ago
      Actually, what you have is one person operating from talking points and another who (emotionally) is responding. The audience member is trying to use the argument that consensus = science and the real scientist is pointing out that truth = science, not consensus. The 98% thing the audience member keeps coming back to is from a list of people who collaborated to promote the idea of AGW - it is far from a peer-reviewed paper backed up by an actually working model. What currently exists are a bunch of hypotheses of which none successfully or accurately predicted the past 20 years. To me, if a hypothesis isn't born out by observation, it's a bogus hypothesis.

      The panel member then properly pointed out that the inter-governmental panel was not a scientific endeavor, but rather an ideological one. That's an accurate and entirely relevant argument to make.

      The argument about the relative success on sustainable energy started as an attempt to establish the aforementioned bona fides of the inter-governmental panel by citing a statistic on renewable energy use. The audience member obviously sees that as a point in favor of recognizing the legitimacy of the panel and therefore bolstering her use of the conclusions of the IGP. The panel member pointed out, however that her metrics were critically flawed: that the only way to see the policy on renewable energy use as a success was to ignore the economic effects of that policy and others from the same government which have resulted in widespread poverty, astronomical unemployment rates, and high taxes. The audience member then responds that those are all acceptable to her ideology, to which the panel member then points out that they are temporary at best, pointing out the end results of these policies as demonstrated by Greece.

      With regard to the strength of the dollar, there are potentially two arguments being made here and I actually think both participants are making separate arguments rather than arguing two sides of a different argument. I think both are right: the audience member is appropriately skeptical about the strength of the US Dollar in comparison to its historical strength. In that she is probably taking into account the US' massive debt and attempts at Quantitative Easing (which is quite ironic given her previous arguments). The panel member is looking at the strength of the US Dollar in comparison to the strength of the Euro as a follow-on to her assertion that the EU is a failing experiment. Anyone can look at the conversion rates and see that since the inception of the Euro its value against the dollar has dropped substantially.

      Personally, I think that the panel member needs to respond less to the personal attacks (though she was absolutely correct in calling them out) and stick with the facts. The audience member clearly needs to do more homework, as she's presenting talking points as facts instead of coming armed with real science.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 7 months ago
    Most devoted idiots cannot let go of their idiocy no matter how much logic you apply to their unscientific statements. The amusing thing is hearing them re-affirm their nonsense by quoting additional nonsense from equally idiotic "authorities." Just for the amusement of this forum, when I put the initials W.F.A. standing for World's Foremost Authority after my name, I am questioned as to the meaning of the three letters, but never (so far) of the explanation.
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    • Posted by IndianaGary 7 years, 7 months ago
      ... and Professor Irwin Corey, the real WFA, might have sued for plagiarism had he not passed away recently. :-]
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      • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 7 months ago
        Since I wasn't in competition as a stand up I doubt if he'd give a crap. Those few of us who are old enough to appreciate comedy without blatant obscenity can weep for the passing of Hope, Cory, Skelton and the generation that could make you laugh until your sides ached.
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        • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 7 months ago
          Relating to gravity a pratfall could be examined as to cause and effect. As a side note Professor I. Cory was hilarious when I watched him on Johnny Carson. It made me think of some of my favorites as a boy .....Buddy Hackett was something else and from the old black and whites films WC Fields
          , Marx Bros and Jonathan Winters and a young Bob Newhart .
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 7 years, 7 months ago
    Empirical doesn't mean what it used to anymore. Apparently consensus can trump empirical if the money, desire for fame and notoriety, and/or the potential for power is sufficient.
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  • Posted by Wgingram 7 years, 7 months ago
    Gravity Sucks.
    Once you have learned that fact you will better understand life.
    Liberalism Sucks even worse than Gravity but has none of the benefits that Gravity provides.
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  • Posted by JuliBMe 7 years, 7 months ago
    Loved it. But, I always enjoy a good fight and a cogent takedown of a liberal idiot. The Irish lady at the table is not a scientist as was assumed. Her name is Ann McElhinney and she's an activist journalist and documentary producer who fights against the climate change hoax.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 7 years, 7 months ago
    My "crickets" in my ears tinnitus interfered with whatever those shrill female voices said.
    I did laugh when those two guys got up to leave early on.
    It reminded me how when talking heads on Fox News get excited and all start talking at once, I pick up my remote and start pushing buttons.
    And I even have captions to read! They do trail behind, though, when people talk fast.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 7 months ago
      I lucked out. All I could hear of the video was the 24 hour a day tinnitus. I installed a high def video card with HDMI and could not get sound to the large screen TV for my UBUNTU Linux operating system. Finally got the sound through to the TV, but now no sound from the built in analog sound to my speakers for my computer monitor. Right now I have more understanding of gravity than the difference in the TV digital and computer analog sound systems.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 7 months ago
    Gravity, like any other law of nature or creation, (existence if you prefer) are our only source of Truth as we define it, (never changing-not relative). However, our relationship to the truth depends upon our understanding of those laws. Gravity is one such law we fail to have a handle on.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 7 months ago
      Do you mean by "Gravity is one such law we fail to have a handle on." that it is not possible to control gravity as one can do with an actual force or do you mean that not much is known about gravity's source other than an overview and math through General Relativity? Whether gravity is a real force due to gravitons or a fictitious force due to space itself is to be discovered. At present, General Relativity gives all the handle that is, with current knowledge, usable.
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      • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 7 months ago
        We still don't know what it is. Sure, we can observe it, measure it, apply math to it and account for it in practice but we still do not understand whether it is a separate force or one that is the results of electromagnetism or something else.
        What is becoming clear lately is that the system, (solar, galactic or universal) is Not a gravitational one.
        Gravity effects best that which it effects close. Kinda like the American government was supposed to work.

        I have to laugh at those TV science guy idiots saying that gravity is nothing more than the weight of the atmosphere upon you...well, why is gravity different across the surface of the earth, why is gravity generally greater at the tops of mountains where there is less atmosphere above you?
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        • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 7 months ago
          Most likely the greatest long distance background effect of gravity shows up as the cause of inertia. Even though gravity reduces by the square of the distance between two bodies as does electromagnetism, it is an affect that has no distance limit or absorption die out by other matter within the age of the Universe. At any place, there is a gravitational field which is the result of the matter at the observable past positions of all the bodies in the observable Universe. It is somewhat like being within a shell of matter where the average field strength within the shell is zero. But what ever is gravity will be felt by a body within the shell as inertia when moving relative to all matter composing the shell or similarly when one applies a force to the body.
          Gravity would be greater at the top of a mountain due to the greater mass causing it or if gravity is due to a shielding affect from some particles in empty space then, too, there would be more gravity but atmospheric pressure would not work as that type of gravitational pressure would act.

          What bothers me about those TV guys and gals who make such error filled statements both about science and other topics is that no one interviewing them has the guts to challenge them in any way on air. All the challenges seem to be in political shows with most likely similar error filled comments.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 7 months ago
    I will agree that the woman in the audience missed the point made off camera that "the washing machine was more important than the birth control pill." She was taking her washing machine for granted. But I do agree with her sentiments that the relative importance of either one depends on your own needs and wants. Personally, I vote for the washing machine. See here: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_roslin...
    (You can limit conception many ways. Washing clothes is less amenable to primitive improvements. It took the industrial revolution.)
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  • -2
    Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 7 months ago
    I almost voted this down as spam because the woman at the table committed a common error and then continued to engage in an uncommon error. Her main point is broadly correct: science is not democratic. However, that Orwellian passphrase ignores much. It is a common failing of the common education that we all decry in others that we learned to express truths as dictionary definitions, or as "sound bites."

    In fact, science does proceed by consensus. It takes a while for deep new truths to be accepted. If you have not read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, then you are missing a piece of your general science education. I confess that I have not read it many years, so I am not clear on whether this is an example from that, but we all know Ohm's Law. It is taught as obvious by simple measurement. Children learn it. But it was rejected when first offered, not in Galileo's day, but in 1827.
    "When Ohm first published his work, this was not the case; critics reacted to his treatment of the subject with hostility. They called his work a "web of naked fancies"[10] and the German Minister of Education proclaimed that "a professor who preached such heresies was unworthy to teach science."[11] " -- Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm%27s...

    Finally, the woman at the table betrayed her ignorance with the nonsense about "everyone thought the Earth was flat until one man..." No. Yes, the Earth is obviously flat to our common experience. Yes, the sky is "bowl" over the "flat" Earth, as best we figured 3000 years ago. However, by consensus, by 400 BCE the Greeks who cared about it pretty much agreed that evidence and logic (reality + reason = objectivity) lead to the conclusion that the Earth is a sphere. ... but of course they were wrong... It is an oblate spheroid (if you care). And the Earth does not "go around the Sun." That, too, is erroneous. The entire solar system (including the Sun) orbits a common and changing barycenter or centroid -- as if that matters when you drive from Alexandria to Memphis.

    And climate change is real. Just ask the dinosaurs. And human activity does affect the weather: cities are warmer than the open land around them. Whatever else may be true seems open to debate and discovery.

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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 7 months ago
      "Whatever else may be true seems open to debate and discovery."
      The debate notion seems like a psychological defense mechanism (or maybe it's political; I don't know) against information we do not like.

      We don't like the implications of evolution --> teach the controversy.
      On vaccines, let's hear from doctors and anti-vaxers.
      On GMOs,let's hear from scientists and from local/organic food advocates.

      It works for reporters. If they just want to report the news, getting "both sides" of the story, even if there only is one real side, at least lets you avoid the controversy and leave it to readers. If their audience is people looking for an "epic takedown" video, then it really works. It doesn't even matter whether we're jumping from washing machines, to global warming, to nutrition programs, to the price of tea an China; as long as it's yelling.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 7 months ago
        Interesting point... But there are controversies in science. The vast bulk go unnoticed. Even people who jump and down about global warming are unconcerned about continental drift, string theory, or the on-going biotic creation of petroleum.
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    • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 7 months ago
      In my mind, the bigger issue is that in saying the earth isn't flat, one probably risked being burned at the stake. We're getting back to that. In my circles (science) we often joke how we have to look over out shoulders and make sure nobody might overhear us with some of our conversation. Consensus isn't just wrong a lot of the time, it's downright dangerous.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 7 months ago
        That never happened. No one was burned at the stake for saying that the Earth is not flat. We can argue Galileo all day, but the fact is that the Church was an active supporter of astronomy and by the time people were really being burned at the stake over religion, most everyone who cared to think about it accepted that Earth is a "sphere."
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
          The Church was never an active supporter of science and did burn people for heresy. Creationism is not science.
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          • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 7 months ago
            That's hate speech. (sarcasm)

            Of course the church burned people. There's a place for science and a place for faith. Any man is certainly capable of having both. It's when the application of force gets integrated in when the screaming, bleeding and running starts...
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          • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 7 months ago
            If you delve into the history of science and read about the development of astronomy, you will find that the problem of Easter - coordinating the lunar and solar calendars - was an impetus. Before he became Pope Sylvester II, Gerbert of Aurillac introduced the astrolabe into Europe from Muslim scholars in Spain. There is much more, and it goes far deeper than the introductory essay in For the New Intellectual.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 7 months ago
      "we all know Ohm's Law"
      Ohm's law is like the basis of everything.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 7 months ago
        The basic electrical equation? I made the mistake of studying engineering, I guess. LOL
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 7 months ago
          Yes. The manager at my first job used to say there's an exception to every rule, except for Ohm's Law. That one always works.
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          • Posted by ewv 7 years, 7 months ago
            Ohm's law is not the basis of electrical engineering. It pertains only to resistance, not explaining other components and phenomena. Even all resistance is not linear -- as in the now omnipresent semiconductors to which Ohm's law does not physically apply except in the mathematical use of piecewise linear approximations across the range of physical nonlinearity.

            For the all the common use of Ohm's law in circuit analysis for the very wide range of materials with linear resistivity to extreme precision and range, it isn't the "basis" of "everything" in electrical engineering. Speaking loosely on behalf of something so common and important is one thing, but it's misleading to those who don't know -- there are people who have been led to think that Ohm's law is the fundamental law of electricity, with no idea of the enormous importance, scope and impact of the real physical basis: the experiments, theories and equations of Maxwell and Faraday.
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